Copy paste from the FB page of DocuDays:

“We received 150 applications for the Civil Pitch 2.0 programme. The jury selected 4 projects that received not only grants for film production, but also mentoring support at all stages of their work. Please welcome the world premiere of the winning films at the 30th anniversary Hot Docs Film Festival in Canada!

All four short documentary projects tell stories about war and people from a unique perspective. “..Pavlo Dorohoi’s 89 Days takes us into a Kharkiv subway-station-turned-bomb-shelter-turned-back-into-a-subway-station; in Under the Wing of a Night, director Lesia Diak immerses herself in 11-year-old Olesia’s new life in Belgium as she waits for her father’s nightly call from back home; Halyna Lavrynets’s Guests from Kharkiv watches activist Nelia try to resettle city-dwellers into rural Ukrainian life; and Anastasiia Tykha’s Our Robo Family celebrates the children’s robotics and programming group Roboclub Vuhledar. Enjoy the freshest Ukrainian documentary talent of 2023!” comments Myrocia Watamaniuk, the Hot Docs Film Festival programmer.

Find the screening schedule, tickets, and other necessary details here. And in June, expect the Ukrainian premiere of the films at the anniversary Docudays UA.

“Civil Pitch 2.0 started at the end of 2021. We actively planned the workshops, took care of the applications, and were in constant contact with foreign tutors. A few days before the full-scale invasion, we were still planning the workshop programme and even hoped to bring our tutors to Kyiv. The very existence of us, of this workshop, and ultimately of this four films, seems like a miracle now, given everything that has happened and is happening. I am grateful to everyone who has supported us along the way: the programme team, tutors, donors, and, of course, the filmmakers and their crews who have worked hard on their projects. 

When we resumed our activities under Civil Pitch 2.0 after the start of the full-scale invasion, we changed the project’s slogan to “Cinema that brings victory closer.” That was more than six months ago. Today, I don’t know if cinema can really bring victory closer, but I do know that cinema can help us survive the most difficult events and make sense of them. I hope that Civil Pitch 2.0 films will allow both foreign and Ukrainian audiences to understand what is happening to us,” adds Darya Bassel, the director of the DOCU/PRO Industry Platform.

I’am in that weird situation that I have not seen the final version of a film that has its premiere tomorrow in Nyon in Switzerland in the presence of the director, a dear friend of me – and my wife – Anna, who we met the first time in Tbilisi way back in 2009 and since then have kept contact with. She presents herself as a filmmaker and visual artist, indeed she is, and she has done so much for Georgian documentary through the company Sakdoc that she runs together with Salomé Jashi. BUT back to her film that I will write more about when I have seen the final version. Here is the intro from the festival’s website:

“Anna Dziapsh-ipa was born of the union between an Abkhazian man and a Georgian woman. In Self-Portrait Along the Borderline, she skilfully weaves together unique archives and fragments to offer a personal and political biography of Georgia-Abkhazia relations. This vibrant exploration foregrounds a divided identity caught between the margins…”

After no success with festivals like IDFA and DOKLeipzig this fine autobiographical documentary essay finds its premiere at Visions du Réel in Nyon in Switzerland, where it will be shown tomorrow monday April 24, world premiere, and the director will be present.

I saw a rough cut long time ago and wrote to Anna: “Love it. It has humour, it has sadness, it is original in shape and has magic images taken by you, plus all the archive including those of yourself, I especially love the one where you look at the camera for a long time and then comes the smile…The spider methaphor, yes, I think it works, happy to have your grandfather so present, the man with the surname you carry (he was a famous football player!)… and your wedding, wow that was big, you use it perfectly… 

If you are not in Nyon to watch the film, click below and watch the trailer, that is wonderful:

https://www.visionsdureel.ch/film/2023/self-portrait-along-the-borderline/ 

Copy paste from (part of) article of today’s Cineuropa, written by Vladan Petkovic: 

CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator, an exclusive training programme for female-identifying documentary filmmakers, has selected the four projects that will take part in its showcase as part of the Cannes Docs programme of the Marché du Film(16-24 May) for the fourth consecutive year. Previous winners include Lin Alluna‘s Twice Colonized [+], Ágnes Horváth-Szabó and Anna Nemet’s Beauty of the Beast, and Maja Prelog‘s Cent’anni….

Rebeladas by Andrea Gautier and Tabatta Salinas centres on the “Cine Mujer”, a group of women filmmakers who gathered 40 years ago to make films dealing with taboo subjects, such as gender violence, rape, femicide, clandestine abortion and labour discrimination. It is a co-production between Dafne Espinosa and Julio Fernández for Perro Rojo Films (Mexico), and Manuel Diaz, Juan Gautier and Andrea Gautier for Smiz and Pixel (Spain).

In 72 Hours by Anna Savchenko, a woman’s life has been incomplete ever since her son was wrongfully accused, sentenced to death and executed within a year. From a grieving mother, she transforms into a symbol of the struggle against the death penalty. It is being produced by Isabel de la Serna for Playtime Films in Belgium and Jean-Marie Gigon for Sanosi Films in France, in co-production with Volia Chajkouskaya for Volia Films (Estonia).

Tata, written and directed by Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc (Acasă – My Home [+]), tells the story of a journalist who discovers that her long-estranged father, who was violent to her as a child, is now the person being abused. Tata is being produced by Monica Lazurean Gorgan for Manifest Film (Romania), Erik Winker for Corso Film (Germany) and Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen for HALAL (Netherlands).

Photo:  Vladan Petkovic

I have written 13 blogposts about Khaled Jarrar on this site – since I met him in Ramallah and in Corfu in the Storydoc workshops organized by Greek Kostas Spiropoulos more than a decade ago. I have talked with him for hours about the Israeli occupation, about his own family and its fate, about his period as bodyguard for Arafat, about his film “Infiltrators” and about his humanistic work as an artist doing happenings around the world – you can read more about this by writing his name in “search” on this site.

No surprise for me that he with his newest film, “Notes on Displacement”, involves himself as the director and cameraman, who goes with a group of Syrian Palestinians on their journey that ends in Germany after troubles at borders in Europe. Troubles to say the least. Humiliation after humiliation. No food or non-eatable food, children and old people, father and mothers, grandparents. It’s chaotic and the film conveys this chaos. There are many night scenes, where you can´t see what happens but you hear voices crying out for help or rough answers from the authorities including the one of Jarrar, who often speaks on behalf of the refugees. And with the refugees with all the warmth and compassion you can come up with in the turbulent situations.

Content as described by Jarrar: “Nadira, an elderly Palestinian, has been a refugee since the age of 12. Now she has to evacuate Damascus, too. She and her daughter Mona feared for their lives there, but the idea of a safe existence elsewhere is a distant dream. (I) filmmaker Khaled Jarrar received unsettling videos and voice messages as they cross to the Greek island of Lesbos. I join them there, on the long road to a new life…

My grandmother Shafiqa was forced to leave her home in Haifa, her Jasmine tree, her cup of tea on her balcony and her view forced me back in time. Nadira’s plea brought me to the front lines; creating new memories by walking this new exodus together. We were real time inside the frame capturing the present to battle the past – creating a communication between the two. As the director from behind the camera I was driven to offer images of our own making, outside the never-ending western paparazzi image onslaught of displaced refugees. This film is for us, our values, our knowledge, our experiences…”

Do I need to say that the film includes images of boats on the water full of people in need, crying for help – of tents where people are together waiting waiting waiting – of clashes with police and guards at borders, especially the Hungarian one is hard to watch and tolerate for its lack of humanity… It’s hard to watch.

Happy that there are artists like Khaled Jarrar, who has the personal courage to get involved and communicate, this time through film.

Palestine, Germany, Qatar, 74 mins., 2022

6 pens.

 I watched two winners of the CPH:DOX 2023 yesterday. One at home and one in the cinema:

“Mrs Hansen & the Bad Companions” by Jella Bethmann (Denmark, 90 mins.) won the Nordic Dox award, so well deserved a recognition for a warm, sweet and touching visit to the chaotic house of Inger Lise Hansen, a wonderful 80 year old woman, who has opened her home for men and women, who have problems dealing with the society and life as such. Inger helps and the film’s portrait of the relationship between her and the young Martin, who has lived in the house for 10 years, is simply beautiful.

“Motherland” by Alexander Mihalkovich and Hanna Badziaka (Sweden, Ukraine, Norway,  92 mins.) won the DOX:Award, for its (quote from jury motivation) “… unfolding the complexity of living within an oppressive and unjust system (Belarus and its army). It poses questions about the idea of an individual choice within a cornered society. The title of the film is a way to give back the power to the women who are at the forefront of this fight.” Yes, the strongest part of the film goes with the presence of Svetlana, a mother whose son was killed in an army poisoned by the so-called Soviet origin dedovshina culture. The cinema was full for the screening of the winning film, great!

Quite a move to go to watch – on my MacBook Pro – “Soviet Bus Stops” by Kristoffer Hegnsvad (Canada, Denmark, 57 min.), a lively journey through many of (or was it all?) the 15 former republics of USSR with energetic photographer Christopher Herwig, whose passion for the bus stops gives the film a special flavour as does the meetings with some of the architects and researchers, who made and studies these gems here there and everywhere. It is entertaining at the same time as it puts the stops into a historical context, I loved it, also because I have been in (some of) the countries visited. Next time I know where to go… More about the film here: https://www.sovietbusstops.com/about 

6 pens.  

I’ve seen it many times before and I love the look of it! A huge room full of documentary people, directors and producers with ideas, more or less developed film projects, clips – called trailers or teasers – meeting with broadcasters, sales agents and distributors to pitch. 20 minutes so you have to be prepared to say what kind of help you need and you have to know in beforehand to whom you are talking… Lots of meetings…

I’ve seen it at IDFA in Amsterdam and at DOCSBarcelona and I´ve always admired the organisers, who – also here – make it work, creating the flow needed so the commissioning editors know where to go, helped by smiling staff members with lists and of course also one, who from the stage ring a bell to say “time is up, ladies and gentlemen, move to next meeting”.

The Forum pitching itself takes place at the Royal Theatre’s traditional “Stærekassen” (!) in the mornings and the meetings at Odd Fellow Palæet (!) five minutes from there, words from the internet:

“The Odd Fellows Mansion is a Rococo town mansion in Copenhagen, Denmark, named after the local branch of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows which acquired the building in 1900…”

So that’s where I went after having been to the Cinemateket to watch Margreth Olin’s impressive “Songs of Earth”. Full house, applause after the film. Big audience potential.

Coming to the Odd Fellow Palæ I was not allowed to go into the Forum meeting hall as I have (only?) a press badge, but I met an old friend Massimo Arvat in the lobby, Italian producer from Turin, who is still going strong with a lot of work for television, corporate films and of course creative documentaries. He declared his love for CPH:DOX, second time he was here, no project this year but networking of course. We had a good chat.

Fortunately the artistic director of the festival Niklas Engstrøm passed by and I told him that I would like to experience the atmosphere and see how it goes for, especially, the Georgians who I know so well from working with the Film Mentoring Program of CinéDoc Tbilisi and from many visits to the country. He opened the door for me and I joined the table of producer Irina Gelashvili and director Keti Machavariani, who monday pitched the project Here, Between This Sea And Those Mountains, “A family saga of a father and daughter – Gogi and Helena, two politicians from different generations – is intertwined with Georgia’s century-long struggle for freedom.” It will be a good film, I am sure, that will also, of course, include the turbulent political situation of the country with massive demonstrations against the government. But I also went to say hello to Julien Pebrel and Tamar Kalandadze at their table, pitching with Sakdoc’s Keti Kipiani a project called Kartli: “A former soviet sanatorium on the edge of the Tbilisi Sea has harbored refugees from Abkhazia for over 30 years. Now in a precarious state, the building can no longer shelter them, uprooting and pulling apart this big family of refugees yet again.” And one more – dear to me – project from Georgia, Boxes from Georgia, presented by director Gvantsa Meparishvili and producer Tiko Nadirashvili: “Volunteers from Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia join a charity for Ukraine in Tbilisi. In this microcosm of regional issues, hard work and solidarity spark unlikely friendships – but power struggles ruin this dynamic, turning best friends into enemies.”

Leaving the place having met so many good friends from my past at EDN, including many from arte – Germany and France, good to see them here in Copenhagen.

It’s another sign of success for the Industry section of CPH:DOX – the amount of decision makers, who attend and take meetings with filmmakers from all over, including the Caucasus countries and of course Ukraine.